... And Louis tried to smile knowingly at
the knowing trustee and executor with his amiable partiality for one
legatee as against the other. Louis' share, beyond the Bycars house,
was in the gilt-edged stock of limited companies which sold water and
other necessaries of life to the public on their own terms.
Rachel left the pair for a moment, and returned from upstairs with
a grey jacket of Louis' from which she had to unstitch the black
_crepe_ armlet announcing to the world Louis' grief for his dead
great-aunt; the period of mourning was long over, and it would not
have been quite nice for Louis to continue announcing his grief.
As she came back into the room she heard the word "debentures,"
and that single word changed her mood instantly from bland feminine
toleration to porcupinish defensiveness. She did not, as a fact, know
what debentures were. She could not for a fortune have defined
the difference between a debenture and a share. She only knew that
debentures were connected with "limited companies"--not waterworks
companies, which she classed with the Bank of England--but just any
limited companies, which were in her mind a bottomless pit for the
savings of the foolish. She had an idea that a debenture was, if
anything, more fatal than a share.
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